Category: Teori

In this post-industrial civilized society or some sociologists call it the information society, we ought to believe there was an uprising economic inequalities that flourished the mainstream media. There was a famous debate of the century in the essence of solving the issue. Some labeled it as the product of free market capitalism with an immense quantity of corporate and individual freedom that brainwashed with the nature of the market. They would likely to believe a ‘leviathan’ or a powerful institution to generate laws and order to maintain the sustainability of the economic equality. And the opposite thought that economic inequality was created with the nature of hard working individuals that thrived in the top of the food chain of the ‘ecosystem’ as darwinian approach on survival instinct between animals. And humans, unlike another regular animals with the essence of consciousness and high intellect compete to one another in order to fullfill their self interest in the cost of the environment. And as the result of that process of the ecosystem, there are winners and losers. That theory embodied with the natural monopoly of a firm in a competitive market. But, on this article I would likely to unveil a new thoughts of the existence of economic inequality that summed up wealth and income inequality. Economic inequality was driven by the nature of the state, that was thriving a central planning approach on a given particular set of a geographical region.

In some cases, every nations on earth was given a set of territory with an additive identity to support the indenpendency of a nation (e.g. Currency, Capital city, Population, Political system, etc.). According to the political science, the identity of a nation should be comprised as the existence of that nation to achieve a fullfillment of autonomy in a set territory. With that old point of view the capital city as the thriving part of a nation should’ve gotten developed compared to the other region. The national budget to splurge in capital city was shown to be higher than any part of other cities that included in a particular state. As a result, a better infrastucture was built upon in the capital city and the wealth of the state transferred mostly to the society within that region. The capital city would’ve encountered an enormous rate of urbanization, when people really thrive for a living. A demagogue of economic inequality happened, within small periods of time. Regional GDP rate was severely higher in capital city than any other cities. And somewhat this idea was overshadowed by the inequality as a new virus to the state. It’s somewhat seen as likely as a cancer.

A better analogy would be a multinational corporation having a large numbers of smaller sectors. In the internal part of corporate management that agreed upon by the CEO and Board of Directors, it’s a natural sense to splurge their balance sheet to improve their central building alongside with them, it’s mandatory. While other smaller sectors of the same firm, receive a smaller part of the central budget to thrive. In economics, that concept was somewhat refered as cash flow constraints. With the same attitude that other profit-seeking organization would sustain their business. The CEO is basicly the executive part in the political hierarcy, following with the board as the legislative. Every nations on earth was excavating this idea and accepted throughout generations. While in that process, because of the difference of assets and conventionally using cash as a building blocks of statistical measurement, the economic inequality was ‘right there’. Even before the birth of the Max Otto Lorenz, who also gave birth to the lorenz curve and the gini coefficient as a tool of measurement.

In this 21st century, the idea of inequality driven by that process of state planned law on the essence of capital city was overshadowed and discredited because of the lack of the political boost to thrive a better bureaucratic occupation. The effect of mainstream media as the coverage and dynamics of the particular set of expression of hatred towards inequality and some who oppose with the mainstream causes of ‘state vs individual’ was a big success. Large corporations are covering themselves in darkness, with bribery to the media of the devil government. Meanwhile on the other hand, politicians lobbied media to overcome with propaganda of socialism as a better solution to the issue of economic inequality. And those debates are carving the benefits and overloading the cost to the society, with the entracing low level of productivity in the partial stasis growth.

Life is Strange, is an episodic decision-making game developed by Dontnod Entertainment in 2013. The game was full of choices, that would determine its future developments in game. Life is strange was considerably a hit and success within years, and also memorable (note by some of youtube gamers). The mesmerizing experience of the game was one of the greatest, and it’s even comparable with other big-hit games. But here, the context that the writer already been thinking of is that the game was full of choices, decisions that encompasses to the past, present, and future. That’s how it’s relatable to the main idea why economic science or political economy was created. Based on people to make choices and alternatives by using limited resources.

In the game, we played as a high school teenage girl named Max Caufield. With her ‘time manipulation’ powers, she could change the reality and create an alternate reality by every player’s choices during the gameplay. Every choices that have been chosen are having consequences to the future events. Corresponding to the economic science analysis, every choices that have been made correlates with the reaction of the story itself. But the advantage of our choices is that we could’ve predicted what the future events would occur when we made a choice. Unfortunately, the advantages of predicted future to encourage making right decisions are limited with the choices itself. An example is when we were trying to scrutinize the consequences jeopardize the environment of the story as in the gameplay tornado. There’s a huge discrepancy between the game theory itself and rational expectations in game. In the final choice, when we should choose to sacrifice on of the main character’s best friend nor the city and people that we lived among them. Rational theorists would have choose the best friend to be sacrificed rather than the entire population of a city and buildings. But as the results of the polls that every gamers have been played that game was resulting both choices as a ‘flipcoin’. The poll was resulting in slight advantage of sacrificing the best friend by 53% and sacrificing the city by 47%. Whether the game theory by nash is flawed or not, the value of each choices is variable and relative, based on the value that every players proposed.

*Player A as the player/Max*Player B as the environment/story

Interestingly, the dilemma of irrational choices by people was written in ‘endowment effect’ theory by Richard Thaler, a behavioral economist. Slight advantage of rational choice by people who played the game in term of analytical focus is relatable to the concept of endowment effect in people that owned a same commodity. They value things differently based on emotional attachment or the utility has ben given by the commodity, as same as the emotional attachment of Max and her best friend. The strong attachment bond of friendship would encompasses the selfish behavior of Max to save her only best friend rather than every people in the city. It’s a common phenomenon that always been found in everyday’s relationship of emotion. The same phenomenon was in the cartoon series of Legend of Korra, when the main character Korra was in a strong friendship and often assumed having a lesbian relationship with her best friend. Max and Korra are valuing their best friend higher than people who are just an acquaintance to them.

*When people are valuing things higher because of emotional attachment and ownership rather than people who just barely contact with their eyes and didn’t really own the commodity

There wasn’t even an equilibrium points during the game, the best alternatives and the best choices. It’s based on how players measure value of every choices with the output of self satisfaction and emotional agreement. But as every action in the game created chain reactions by the environment, it’s a real dilemma for players and Max as the main character itself. Decision making episodic game that is similar is ‘The Walking Dead’ who has been developed in 2012-now by Telltale games. The difference is there are no advantages by seeing the future and rewinding to make a decision in the past unlike Life is Strange. Even though both has the same emotional platform. In Life is Strange gameplay, hardest choice that even experts couldn’t solve is :

Review by the Writer about the game : Fascinating, Memorable, Precious, and Beautiful are those adjectives to really describe this game, maybe more. You will have a mesmerizing experience that gave you chills and laughs during the game, i suppose the reader to bring out tissue during the gameplay for unexpected emotional scenes. Recommended by the Writer!